Ben Wittes (BOOM! guy) outs trolls who were harassing Lisa Page, one at a time

[Dennis Donovan]

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Benjamin Wittes ✔ @benjaminwittes

· Jan 18, 2020
As an experiment in disinformation, I just ran all of the hostile responses to this tweet from Lisa through @BotSentinel. All were reported to have high probability of being troll bots. That should tell you something. @jack, worth a look at automated activity sliming Lisa.

Lisa Page ✔ @NatSecLisa

All I can say is this: I very much look forward to Rod’s deposition.

<snip>

Benjamin Wittes ✔ @benjaminwittes

· Jan 18, 2020
Replying to @benjaminwittes
I will continue to do this every time Lisa tweets as a demonstration of what automated attacks look like.

Benjamin Wittes ✔ @benjaminwittes

@cbouzy would love to chat with you about how to mechanize reporting on trollbot replies to @natseclisa’s feed—and that of others.

1:14 PM - Jan 18, 2020

His follow-up tweets are eye opening about the real-time trolling taking place.

[BumRushDaShow]

1. Ooo nice

And the Bot Sentinel tool he used has an extension for Firefox & Chrome.

Link to tweet

TEXT
Bot Sentinel @BotSentinel

📣We are happy to announce the new Bot Sentinel browser extension is now available for Chrome and Firefox!🎉

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bot-sentinel/eadmnplpcakhnmjbaioeholpakbknhgc …

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bot-sentinel …
Bot Sentinel – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Download Bot Sentinel for Firefox. Automatically detect political trollbots and untrustworthy accounts.
addons.mozilla.org
530
11:29 AM - Oct 8, 2019

I don't have a twitter account but will read/post tweets (when the account is obviously a "public" one) and it's good to have an extension like this to separate the "black gold" compost from the shit.

[Dennis Donovan]

4. I keep saying it's like having Roddy Piper's glasses in "They Live"

[BumRushDaShow]

5. LOL

[Lonestarblue]

2. I know what a bot is but not why that technology is even needed.

Could someone who understands this stuff explain how companies make money from bots? Otherwise, why can’t Twitter just disable bots to prevent trolls from misusing them?

[ecstatic]

3. I think because a lot of companies use software to schedule

social media posts, etc.

Still, it shouldn't take that much work to figure out how to distinguish between legit automation and malicious automation. Perhaps they could require additional registration/monitoring to use such tools on their platform.